A howl in the distance startles Landon awake.
He sits up slowly, blinks a couple of times, and brings a hand up to rub at the sleep still caught in his eyes. He stays quiet. Even as he glances around the same medical room he had passed out in, the only sound he can pick up comes from the low hum of the fluorescent lighting above.
He breathes in. Counts to ten. Exhales.
The howl comes again.
It sounds far away. Alone, thankfully. Nothing seems to answer it. Landon stands and makes his way to the door, pressing his ear against it and listening to the sounds of the passageway. He doesn’t hear a thing. As far as he can tell, the halls are as empty as every part of the ship that he’s explored. But there’s something out there. Maybe not on the ship, but in the desert that lurks just beyond its metal walls.
He debates keeping the door shut. A quick glance through one of the two porthole windows above the bed shows a dark night sky. But he dismisses the idea as quick as it came. There’s being smart, and then there’s being paranoid, and that line of thinking is far more of the latter than the former.
Landon frowns, pulls his wrist up, and glances at his watch. The starry sky outside is as dead a giveaway as can be, but it has gotten late. He curses under his breath. He hasn’t had anything to eat since…
He stops, places a hand on his stomach, and flinches when it doesn’t hurt.
The canteen can wait. Stepping away form the door, he walks over to the mirror next to the cabinet to look himself over.
His hair, usually well maintained and a point of pride, looks like shit. There’s enough dirt and grime in it to clump it together, and fuck he doesn’t wanna deal with that. It might be more value to just shave it off and start over. His eyes wander down to his clothes. Honestly, they’re not much better; everything is soaked with enough blood to make it look like a state fair tye-dye job.
The hole in his side, however, has disappeared.
Landon pulls at the hems of both his shirts, lifts them up away from his body, and stares at the rough textured scar from the bullet that tore through his side. He's still covered in dried blood, and his shirt pries up about as easily as a screw, but the wound itself looks more like an old patch job from years ago than something that had happened only yesterday.
‘Was it yesterday?’ The thought is idle, if a bit unwelcome. And he realizes that with his phone dead, he has no way to know the date. His simple diving watch only tells time, and Landon has no way of knowing how long has passed from falling in the water to waking up… wherever ‘here’ is.
He releases a long, agitated sigh. “Doesn’t matter,” he grunts. Cracking a knuckle under his thumb, he strides back over to the desk, grabs some of the medication, and stuffs them into his pockets. “There’s more important things to worry about.” He walks back towards the door, pauses, and with one final sigh, places his hand on the knob.
With a soft click, it opens.
Landon blinks and looks down at a small, smiling face straight out of fiction.
Maybe he should’ve been a little paranoid.
And he probably shouldn’t have eaten the gummies.
A small, black and white zigzagoon stares back at him, tongue lolling out of its mouth and tail wagging back and forth. It looks a bit different than he remembers, but he does recall a promotional trailer for one of the newer games that he never got a chance to play. Maybe it's one of the regional variants? He recalls a handful of them from the Sun and Moon titles, but this little guy isn’t ringing a bell. Regardless, it’s as cute as a button.
It leans back on its haunches and yips a greeting at him.
Landon crouches down. He offers his hand and smiles. “And just who are you?” He asks. Once the pokemon leans forward and sniffs him, he takes it as the all-clear to reach over and scratch behind its neck.
Zigzagoon lets out a noise halfway between a groan and a purr.
He laughs. This is absurd. He’s scratching the neck of a real, breathing pokemon. It’s like patting the back of the Tooth Fairy. Or the Easter Bunny. Or fucking Santa Claus.
An idea strikes him. It’s a flight of fancy, and he’d never admit it --ever, no one could ever know if it doesn’t work-- but he’s curious how much Zigzagoon understands him.
“So,” he starts, a grin pulling at his lips, “you don’t happen to know where I could get a bite to eat, do you?”
Zigzagoon barks once before taking off down the hall. Landon follows.
----------------------------------------
It doesn’t take long for Zigzagoon to lead Landon to the canteen. It’s only two floors higher than the med bay he’d been in, but there’s a solid sixty/forty chance he would’ve died trying to make that climb before he’d passed out on the floor.
The glass shards and splintered wood certainly wouldn’t have done him any favors.
Landon leans down, picks up Zigzagoon, and carefully makes his way through the mess. Unlike the other parts of the ship he has explored so far, there’s a huge amount of visible damage here. The larger windows that covered the entire side wall (and some of the glass panes that covered the buffet line) shattered at some point, leaving the floor covered in glass. The chairs and tables aren’t nearly in as bad a state, though only a handful of them seem to have come out unscathed.
Despite how bad things look, it isn’t the worst place he’s eaten.
At least some of the tables are on more than two legs. Outside of the hit-by-a-hurricane aesthetic, the dining hall looks about as utilitarian as can be. Sleek steel countertops along the back wall, cheap furniture in the lounge near the windows, and carpet that went out of style fifty years ago.
“That’s about par for the course,” Landon says, looking down at the pokemon who can’t stop squirming in his arms. It barks at him, and oh, it isn’t squirming. It’s trying to point him toward another door.
He shifts Zigzagoon under one arm before making his way over to the back. The door opens easily enough, and Landon lets out a hum as he takes in the kitchen. Compared to the canteen, it impresses. Though the coloring is much the same, large steel refrigerators cover the back wall. There’s an entire row of cooking stations, and several large, open griddles that look as new as the day they were purchased. Some of the cabinet latches and doors have broken open, spilling some utensils and canned food onto the floor, but outside of that, everything looks pristine.
He whistles, low and slow, before he brings the hand not carrying Zigzagoon up to his mouth and coughs into it. He pulls on his collar and coughs. If the boys back home had heard him catcall a fridge, he’d never hear the end of it. Regardless, he places the pokemon back on the ground and follows it to the fridge.
It hums with life; a grin pulls at his lips.
He’d been worried about that. Running electricity on a backup generator is one thing, but he has no idea how cooling systems work. But it all runs smooth. He can smell the cold air, feel it from the vents in the bottom that blast his legs and feet.
He can’t stop smiling. In part, he owes it to the zigzagoon that huddles up next to the vent below him, eyes closed and tongue rolled back into its mouth for the first time since he’s met it. The other part is that he’s starving. With a steady hand, he reaches out to take a firm grasp of the handle and pulls.
“Jackpot!”
The fridge is stuffed. Most of it is mid to long-term perishable foodstuff. Carrots. Berries. Cold cuts and cheese. Fucking bacon. Landon stops thinking, grabs an apple he spots, and takes a large bite.
It’s the single best thing he’s ever tasted.
He’s not crying, dammit! That’s just the dry air. Zigzagoon certainly doesn’t seem to believe him as he yips again from down at his feet. Landon stops chewing, swallows, and crouches down.
“You’re hungry.” He doesn’t ask, it’s pretty obvious based on how the pokemon looks at him and whines. “Well, what do you like?”
He feels dumb even as the words leave his mouth. Zigzagoon can’t answer him in a meaningful way, but it’s also a pokemon based on a raccoon. He’s almost certain the thing will eat anything that he hands it without any complaint. Testing the theory, Landon grabs several items and moves them down below. Greens, fruit, even a block of stank ass cheese that he doesn’t recognize, and --outside of nibbling on some spinach leaves-- the little bugger ignores all of it.
It takes him a minute before he realizes why. On the top shelf, in the back of the fridge, he spots an open bag of berries. He recognizes the oran, rawst, and pecha berries by sight, but there are a couple others grouped in there that he’s unfamiliar with.
He doesn’t hesitate as he opens up the bag further and spills its contents onto the floor.
Zigzagoon immediately tears into one of the orans. The berry is almost as big as its head. It’s a peculiar sight, if a bit funny. Landon smiles and leans his back against the griddle, staring at the open fridge and biting once more into his apple.
In this single moment, he can’t help but feel as if he has solved one of life's biggest, and greatest mysteries. He continues to watch Zigzagoon while he grabs a cold cut of meat, stuffs it with a piece of cheese he tears off from a block that smells a little less aged, chews on it, and savors the taste.
Landon breathes in. Counts to ten. Exhales.
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Damn. Everything is so fresh it hurts. He’s spent the last month between ports that he can’t name, and a sea that he never wants to look at again, but not once did he ever stop and enjoy the small things. Maybe, he thinks with a bit of trepidation, those places were worth traveling to. Maybe he should’ve enjoyed being a tourist. He’d been so tied up and busy whenever he’d been in town that he’d never made an effort.
‘What an oversight.’ Now, he might never get the chance again.
Landon stops eating. There are a lot of things he thinks about: his family, his friends --people, places, things-- that he’ll never see again.
He cries. As he leans his head back, he absentmindedly pulls Zigzagoon close. And in the same breath that he grieves for what he has lost, he thanks whoever listens for this second chance.
----------------------------------------
The next couple of hours pass in a blur. Landon cleans up the mess he’d made in the kitchen, even taking twenty or so minutes to clear a path through the commons area so that Zigzagoon can walk on it without worry. He realizes afterwards that it was pointless when the pokemon walks over the glass and debris with no issue.
Which, okay. Fair. He doesn’t know anything about pokemon and how hardy they apparently are.
In the meantime, he’s continued to search the lower levels of the superstructure to get an idea of what he has available to him. He explores the living quarters, finds the laundry room, and even stops by the gym.
All of them were as empty as the rest of the ship. As far as he can tell, the place is abandoned. There are as many people here as there are pokemon, and that party of two is already accounted for.
After going through the bottom two floors, Landon finds himself back in the medical room. He’d cleaned up a bit using the showers he’d found in the locker room (and holy shit that had been weird) before ‘borrowing’ a couple of sets of clothes that were roughly his size. They were close enough to wear, but just far enough away from his actual measurements to piss him off.
He rolls the sleeves of his new linen shirt up to his elbows and picks through the rest of the things he has collected.
He has a knife now! Landon picks it up, flips it a couple of times in his palm. It’s a nice piece. Not too short, not too long, and with a military-style rigidness that reminds him of a KA-BAR. The handle fits well in his hand, and the material is something synthetic that should hold up to excessive wear. His only real complaint is with the aggressive drop point, and how it makes him look like a cheesy movie villain or military wannabe when he holds it.
Turning back towards the table, he goes through the wrapped paracord he’d found, some matches, and the refillable water bottles that he’d pilfered from the kitchen. A good haul, made complete by the nicest pair of work boots he has ever seen.
They’re so nice he’s already wearing them.
Landon sighs, looks down at Zigzagoon, and scratches his cheek. “What now, buddy?” The pokemon perks up. “We’ve gone through most of the boat. All that’s left is communications.”
And that’s the crux of the problem. The outside stairwell to communication that runs up the side of accommodations isn’t there anymore. At least ten steps are missing or bent in on each other from where that part of the structure collapsed. As much as he’d like to get up there, it isn’t feasible.
Zigzagoon gives a full body wag, barks once, and makes its way to the door. Running around in a circle several times before barking at him again, the pokemon taps its feet onto the tile back and forth, pitter-pattering like rain on a cool spring morning.
“You know another way?” Excitement bubbles in his chest. “You want me to follow you.” When Zigzagoon takes off again, he knows he guessed right.
Now, they’re playing cat and mouse. Landon walks out to the hall, sees the direction Zigzagoon has gone in, and follows it to where it stopped. Every time he gets close, Zigzagoon runs in another direction and forces him to catch up. The entire time he keeps pace. Well, he keeps pace with himself. Not with the pokemon.
He breathes in. Counts to ten. Exhales.
He’s moved a lot today. And for the first time in years, his lungs feel clean. He breathes without issue. The aches, pains, and problems from before are gone, and now that he’s eaten, he feels good, even if a little off balance.
They make their way to the floor below the canteen, and Zigzagoon rushes under a part in the hall where the light fixture has fallen down into the passageway. Hidden past a collapsed part of the ceiling tiles, the pokemon waits for him in an open room with a set of stairs.
Somehow, along the way, it also magically produced a jar of peanut-butter that it’s carrying in its jaws.
Landon follows, careful not to trip on anything loose. Even the stairs aren’t safe from the ship's wreckage -- and as much as he doesn’t want to think about that, some ideas that he doesn’t like have taken root in the back of his head.
Eventually, they come to the end. There’s a short hall at the top of the stairs that leads into what he assumes is comms. Zigzagoon runs to the door, drops the peanut-butter, and waits.
“Ziggy?” he hears a voice call, followed by a rough cough. “Did you find something?”
That easily makes it into the top ten things he didn’t expect. Landon chews the inside of his cheek. Of course Zigzagoon had a trainer. Why wouldn’t it? There’s no way in hell that black and white zigzagoon are native to the desert, so what else would it be here for? With a sigh, Landon makes his way to the door.
“Hey!” he calls out, “is someone there?” What a stupid thing to ask. Of course there’s someone there, idiot. “Your Zigzagoon found me. Do you need help?” He tacks on, hoping to ease any tension.
Maneuvering under another collapsed light fixture, Landon makes his way beside the raccoon-like pokemon and stares into a scene more fitting in a war sim than a pokemon game. The control room is in complete disarray. Several pieces of navigation equipment have been flattened by a desk that’s been thrown from one side of the room to the other and is now propped up against the wall. The helm, and some of the equipment near it, look like it’s been crushed -- as if a hand reached out and squeezed too hard. And once again, cracked glass and chipped ceramic (presumably from the potted plants that are no longer potted) litter the floor.
Towards the front of the room sits a single man. He’s old, with dry, leathery skin and wiry, silver hair. He offers a terse nod, and his hand comes up under his chin to rake through his long beard.
His most noticeable feature is his missing leg.
The man rests in a wheelchair. It takes Landon a handful of seconds to see the prosthetic leaning against the wall next to him, and he lets out a breath. It isn’t a fresh wound, but he can still see cuts and scrapes littering the rest of the man’s body -- more than likely from the ship’s impact and the broken furniture.
Landon tries not to stare. He lacks subtlety, though, and he coughs into his hand when the sailor’s brow creases. Clearly, he's caught.
“You’re not with the terrorists.”
Holy shit, that’s a loaded question. “No,” Landon says, “I’m not.” What the hell can he even say to something like that? “I was out in a small fishing boat,” he decides. It’s close enough to the truth. “One second I’m overboard, the next I’m in the desert.”
Landon reaches into his pocket, grabs some of the medicine he’d kept in there, and tosses it toward the man. “Not sure how much it’ll help, but it’s gotta be better than nothing.”
There’s a pregnant pause. It stretches long enough between them that Landon becomes uncomfortable. Finally, the man breaks eye contact, twists the top of Wish, and pops a couple into his mouth.
“Thanks,” the old man says, and judging by his tone, he does not say it often. He looks torn, like he wants to say a million different things yet cannot decide on a single one.
“You ever heard of Cipher?”
Landon blinks. “Ah,” the realization hits him harder than a train, even though he’d already had suspicions. There are a million different places in the pokemon world, a million different times, and it has taken this long for him to realize he ended up in one of the worst ones.
He snorts. ‘I guess that fits.’ Second chances are usually rigged anyways.
“A bit,” he pauses, hand coming up to scratch his cheek. “They’re like Rocket, yeah? Steal pokemon, harass people, etcetera. Y’know, typical goon crime.”
The man grunts. “You from far away?” When Landon nods, he continues. “Then yeah, that’s the gist. The lot of them are criminals, pretty nasty ones at that. Experiment with ‘mons and their feelings. None of its good.”
That seems to line up well enough with what he remembers from the Colosseum and Gale of Darkness titles. Damn, it had been at least ten years since he had played either of them, but he remembers that both games had a great deal to do with shadow pokemon and the consequences that came with them.
“How’d they drop the ship in the sand, then? Don’t tell me they carried it here.”
A dark look crosses the man’s face. “They got their hands on something…” He pauses, looks down at his hands. “Something big. And strong. One second everything was peachy --we were makin’ our way back to Gateon from Vermilion-- and the next, everything goes to shit.”
He clears his throat. “I hear people callin’ up to coms about Cipher and an attack. We pop the alarm, and next thing I know, everything goes topsy-turvy on me. After it stops shakin’, I’m all alone. Once I got my shit straight, I sent Ziggy out to look for food and people -- in that order.”
“I’ve had plenty to eat and drink, but after two days of searchin’, she comes back with you right behind her. As far as I can tell, none of my crew got brought with me.”
Landon frowns. Fuck, he really wishes that he could have replayed those games, but this is only half familiar. There sure as hell wasn’t an old crippled man with a zigzagoon on board, though the stuff with Lugia (and he doesn’t want to touch that with a ten-foot pole) seems about right.
“Well, I can tell you right now,” Landon says, “that I’m the only other person onboard. Outside of the really messed up parts,” he gestures at the room, hoping his point is made. “I’ve gone through most of the lower deck and accommodations. Whatever y’alls cargo was is long gone.”
The man nods as if he expects that. Honestly, that wouldn’t surprise Landon. If what he said was true, then his zigzagoon had been tearing the ship apart for any signs of life. He turns, checks on the little fella, and sees it running around in circles gunning after its own tail.
That’s stupid cute. Or just flat stupid. Maybe both.
“You’ve taken a liking to Ziggy, have you?”
Landon turns back to the man. His face has softened, drawing away from the hard edges of before. “Yeah,” Landon says. “He’s sweet, even if a little clueless.”
The man chuckles. “She,” he corrects. “And yes, Ziggy is very sweet.” He pauses, reaches for his prosthetic leg against the wall behind him. “She was my granddaughter’s. And, well--” his face tightens. “--I’ve been taking care of her for a little while now.”
The man clears his throat. “Anyway,” he says, “she’s gonna need your help.” He starts to put on the sleeve that covers his knee. “I guess I’m going to need your help, too. Even if you’ll hate me for it.”
That sounds pretty doomed. “What are you talking about, old man?”
“Old man?” He chortles. “I guess I never did introduce myself. Name’s Sam, kid,” he says, a smile growing on his face. “And I need you to look after Ziggy, just like how she’s gonna have to look after you.”
The confusion on Landon’s face must’ve been visible. “You think Cipher is done with this ship? It’s a loose end, boy, and they’re gonna come knockin’ as soon as they figure out where we are.”
Oh, yeah, that makes some sense. Landon vaguely recalls an interaction like that in the game --or, at least, he remembers traveling to the boat and doing some battles here. Whether or not they were with Cipher, he can’t recall.
But this isn’t a game.
Landon’s hands clam up as he tightens them into fists. He’s dealing with actual fucking terrorists. He knows who they are, sure, but how they operate and what they’re capable of is foreign knowledge. It’s not like what he knows about the game is consistent. The last time he’d played Colosseum, he’d been in middle school, and the little things he does remember are not reliable.
“Seems like you’re startin’ to get it. Even if we get the radio equipment working --and that’s a big if-- no doubt Cipher is monitoring every channel, and chances are, they’ve got a better estimate of where we landed than we do.” Sam stops and takes a moment to secure his leg. “If you stay, you’re stuck here with me when they show up. So then they get here, they take Ziggy, and then who knows what’ll happen after.”
He looks up, meets Landon’s eyes. Reaching into his pocket, he pulls out a red and white, standard issue pokeball and offers it. “Or you can salvage what you can and make your way into the desert.”
Landon glances one last time at Ziggy. He sees the trepidation on her face, the way she shuffles back and forth. She’s nervous. Fuck, he gets it. He’s nervous. But he also sees the spark in her eye. The excitement that bubbles just beneath the surface. Dying in the desert wasn’t in his plans for a pokemon journey, but between that and waiting for goddamn terrorists, his mind is already made.
He reaches for the ball.